Video cameras and digital still cameras generally employ a single image sensor with a color filter array to record a scene. This approach begins with a sparsely populated single-channel image in which the color information is encoded by the color filter array pattern. Subsequent interpolation of the neighboring pixel values permits the reconstruction of a complete three-channel, full-color image. This full-color image, in turn, can be sharpened to improve the appearance of sharp edges and fine detail. One popular approach is to either directly detect or synthesize a luminance color channel, e.g. “green”, and then to generate a high-frequency luminance image as an initial step. This high-frequency luminance channel is then modified in a variety of ways and then added to the full-color image to produce a sharpened full-color image. One typical example is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 5,237,402 (Deshon et al.) in which the full-color image is converted into a luminance-chrominance space and a high-frequency luminance image is generated from the luminance channel and then added back to the full-color image after color correction and conversion back to the original color space. A method of high-frequency luminance image modification based on adaptive amplification of the high-frequency luminance values is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,038,388 (Song).
In the instance of remote sensing (satellite imagery), it is advantageous from a signal-to-noise perspective to directly sense a panchromatic channel using scanning optical system. This panchromatic channel can then be used in place of a luminance channel in the sharpening process. U.S. Pat. No. 5,949,914 (Yuen) describes directly sensing a higher-resolution panchromatic image and several lower-resolution narrow-band color images, and performing an iterative deconvolution process responsive to the panchromatic image to sharpen the narrow-band color images. U.S. Pat. No. 6,097,835 (Lindgren) teaches a method of projecting the directly sensed, higher resolution panchromatic image onto the lower narrow-band color images to extract the appropriate sharpening image components that are subsequently used to sharpen the narrow-band color images. The direct implementation of these methods in video and digital still cameras is hampered by the inability to incorporate similar scanning optical system within said cameras.
Under low-light imaging situations, it is advantageous to have one or more of the pixels in the color filter array unfiltered, i.e. white or panchromatic in spectral sensitivity. These panchromatic pixels have the highest light sensitivity capability of the capture system. Employing panchromatic pixels represents a tradeoff in the capture system between light sensitivity and color spatial resolution. To this end, many four-color color filter array systems have been described. U.S. Pat. No. 6,529,239 (Dyck et al.) teaches a green-cyan-yellow-white pattern that is arranged as a 2×2 block that is tessellated over the surface of the sensor. U.S. Pat. No. 6,757,012 (Hubina et al.) discloses both a red-green-blue-white pattern and a yellow-cyan-magenta-white pattern. In both cases, the colors are arranged in a 2×2 block that is tessellated over the surface of the imager. The difficulty with such systems is that only one-quarter of the pixels in the color filter array have highest light sensitivity, thus limiting the overall low-light performance of the capture device.
To address the need of having more pixels with highest light sensitivity in the color filter array, U.S. patent application Publication No. 2003/0210332 (Frame) describes a pixel array with most of the pixels being unfiltered. Relatively few pixels are devoted to capturing color information from the scene producing a system with low color spatial resolution capability. Additionally, Frame teaches using simple linear interpolation techniques that are not responsive to or protective of high frequency color spatial details in the image.